Tuesday, May 5, 2009

I de dager var kjempene på jorden. The land of one's childhood, no matter its physical location, marks the same place on every person's emotional map. In those days there were giants in the earth, and the sons of God came unto the daughters of men. And in turn those daughters bore children who became mighty men of old, men of renown. . . . There the warriors stood taller, whether they swung bats or wore plastic armor beneath their jerseys. The preachers spoke with greater authority, sometimes of heaven but mostly of hell. And above all the daughters of men have no greater beauty than those you first meet in that never-forgotten land. So struck will you be by your discovery, your terrible and thrilling discovery that you want one and all of them at once and forever, that you will spend the balance of your days searching for one to compare with the girls you recall from the founding of the kingdom of giants.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Jockey Calvin Borel said he owed his success to his father. When asked what his father did, Calvin delivered a terse and wise catechism on child rearing: "He believed in me."

Calvin won the 2007 Kentucky Derby, the 2009 Kentucky Oaks and the 2009 Kentucky Derby riding a 50 to 1 long shot that arrived at Churchill Downs after being drive across country from New Mexico in a trailer pulled by his trainer's pick-up truck--the horse-racing equivalent of hitch-hiking to the Derby.